In recent years, the petroleum industry has invested heavily in the development of improved marine survey techniques and seismic data processing methods in order to increase the resolution and accuracy of seismic images of subterranean formations. Marine surveys illuminate a subterranean formation located beneath a body of water with acoustic signals produced by one or more submerged seismic sources. The acoustic signals travel down through the water and into the subterranean formation. At interfaces between different types of rock or sediment of the subterranean formation, a portion of the acoustic signal energy may be refracted, a portion may be transmitted, and a portion may be reflected back toward the formation surface and into the body of water. A typical marine survey is carried out with a survey vessel that passes over the illuminated subterranean formation while towing elongated cable-like structures called streamers. The streamers may be equipped with a number of collocated, dual pressure and particle motion sensors that detect pressure and vertical particle motion wavefields, respectively, associated with the acoustic signals reflected back into the water from the subterranean formation. The pressure sensors generate seismic data that represents the pressure wavefield and the particle motion sensors generate seismic data that represents the vertical particle motion wavefield. The survey vessel receives and records the seismic data generated by the sensors.
After seismic-data acquisition, seismic data processing is used to enhance the seismic data and generate images of the subterranean formation. However in practice, the seismic data is typically contaminated with noise due to any number of different noise sources. The seismic data may also be adversely affected by acquisition-system deviations, such as source element dropout and streamer feathering. Noise and other factors that affect the quality of seismic data are called “defects.” If the acquired seismic data are defective to the extent that the geophysical survey objectives are not met, mitigating actions such as equipment maintenance, changes to acquisition design or rejection and reacquisition of the data may be required. Because the cost in survey vessel production time arising from mitigating actions is great, it is desirable that quality control (“QC”) measures are sufficiently rapid to quantify the impact of defects upon fulfillment of the geophysical objectives before the survey vessel acquires significant additional seismic data, and sufficiently accurate that the impact of each defect upon the seismic data may be assessed independently and the most significant mitigating actions prioritized correctly.